


the inexorable tick of borrowed time

by triplesalto



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Timey-Wimey, Will Inevitably Be Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-09 16:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12280233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplesalto/pseuds/triplesalto
Summary: Perhaps it was time, the Doctor thought, looking down at the book she still held. She wore a new face now, one that River would never see. Perhaps it was time to read River’s diary at last.





	the inexorable tick of borrowed time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Coppercrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coppercrow/gifts).



The Doctor didn’t read River’s diary for a long time.

His initial resolve to leave it in the Library, there to bear silent witness to her for eternity, had quickly crumbled when he realised that it was possible that a traveller immune to the Vashta Nerada might come along and find it. He had scarcely known River, and yet he found that the idea of anyone touching River’s diary, let alone reading it, was repulsive; and that was even before he took into account the possibility of someone using the details to attack him. What the Master might do with inside knowledge of his timestream, the Doctor shuddered to think. 

So he took it back to the TARDIS, without telling Donna, and put it in the library. It could live there in quiet peace, keeping company with _The History of the Time War_ and other books that the universe had forgotten. He gave it pride of place in a cosy corner, and touched its cover in wordless farewell.

Years went by. Centuries. The Doctor’s face changed; he met River again. He learned why she had looked at him with such affection, and why she had been surprised to find none in return. They ran through the universe together, and every time they compared diaries, he remembered the way her story ended, and his hearts ached. He hated endings. Endings were for other people. He couldn’t bear the knowledge that sat like a weight in his bones, the memory of the love in her eyes the moment before she flashed out of existence. He looked at the familiar bright blue of her diary, and wished fiercely that the pages would go on forever.

Companions came and went. The Doctor met people, saved people, loved people, lost people. Ever so often, there was River, shot through his life like golden threads through silk. Her laughter and the flash of her eyes wove their way into his hearts, and her appearances became the unexpected pleasant surprises of his existence. The Doctor was used to living for the present alone, but now he found himself looking for the next bounce of golden curls and wife-shaped whirlwind with pleased anticipation. Always unexpected but always welcome, she brought sparkle to his days and brightness to his memories.

And then there was Darillium, and it was the end.

Twenty-four years they spent together on Darillium; twenty-four years, but to time travellers those years expanded, stretching obligingly to encompass lifetimes. For every hour on Darillium, there were side jaunts, adventures and capers and rescue missions, mysteries solved and children rescued and planets defended, and back in time for tea. The Doctor learned what it was like to have River in his life on a constant, rather than intermittent, basis. She was his right hand, or he was hers; and if she was too mercurial to be called his rock, she was his delight.

He woke with her tucked in his arm, and fought with her at his back, and watched the stars with her at his shoulder. He listened to the free joy of her laughter, and kissed the curve of her smile, and watched the shining mischief of her eyes. Twenty-four full years, all theirs.

And all the while River’s diary sat in the TARDIS library, entombed at the centre of the ship that had loved her.

When their years together finally came to an end, his life was darker without her. He travelled the universe alone again, and learned not to expect her at his side; it took longer than he had anticipated. Sometimes he thought he heard the peal of her laughter, and turned before he remembered. His grief did not overwhelm him – he had been driven mad with grief before, and vowed never to let it happen again – but it shadowed his life where she had brightened it, sapping the colours of their vibrancy and muting the wonder. 

Now that she was gone, and there would never again be a fear of spoilers, his reasons for leaving her diary to collect dust became more complicated. Someday he would read it. Someday – perhaps a long time from now, perhaps tomorrow – he would run a finger over the curves of her words, laugh at her jokes and the inimitable wicked humour that always ran through her like quicksilver. Reading her diary, having her back beside him in spirit, was a joy that he could look forward to, and in delaying it he prolonged it. 

And so the years passed.

❧

It was after she had changed faces again, and was exploring the TARDIS’s new design – the TARDIS always liked to show off her new room schemes like a proud mother cat with a basketful of kittens, and the Doctor knew to ooh and aah at all the appropriate places – that the Doctor ran across River’s diary again.

It was sitting exactly where she had last seen it a hundred years ago, nestled in a cosy corner of the library, bright blue and beautiful. The Doctor stroked a finger across its cover. She could see the dancing smile in River’s eyes as she clutched the diary to her chest, chiding “Spoilers!” How that word had used to frustrate the Doctor. Now she wished she could hear it just one more time. 

“I’m getting old,” she told the TARDIS. 

This was not news to the TARDIS (who managed to convey her opinion despite not having a voice), nor to the Doctor. She sighed. “Sorry. We’ll be old together, how about that?” 

_Speak for yourself_ , the Doctor imagined the TARDIS saying. 

Perhaps it was time, she thought, looking down at the book she still held. She wore a new face now, one that River would never see. Perhaps it was time to read River’s diary at last. The Doctor had no illusions that it would salve the ache entirely, but River had always made her smile. She found she liked the idea of starting off this new face with a smile, with River beside her in spirit. 

There was a comfortable armchair in the cosy corner. The Doctor sank into it and opened the diary to the first page.

_Today I did not kill Hitler, despite my best intentions. I did get a hot-as-fuck new body, kiss the Doctor, kill the Doctor, kiss the Doctor again, and sacrifice all my regenerations to save him from dying. What can I say, it was a good kiss! Oh, and also I was tortured by an evil robot who looked like my mother. Not fun, do not recommend. Shopping list: jodphurs. To-do list: kiss the Doctor again. Damn that man. Even when I was trying to kill him, I couldn’t help noticing his arse. Amy never told me he had a nice arse._

The Doctor bit her lip against a smirk. Her past selves might have been flustered, but she found that she quite enjoyed River’s assessment now. She wondered what River would make of this body. Would River say she had a nice arse again? Come to that, River had been amply endowed in that area herself… She lost herself in pleasurable memories for a while, before coming back to herself with a start. 

Weeping Angels, Jim the Fish, the Silence – their adventures unfolded as the Doctor read on, vivid and funny and sometimes lewd. River’s voice sparkled from the pages, the confident strokes of her handwriting as clear and familiar to the Doctor as the amused lilt of her voice. Here were Amy and Rory, her affection for her parents clear. Here was the Doctor, an eternal companion who exasperated and charmed River in equal measures. Here was running, and shouting, and dodging, and watching the stars, and all the moments in between. 

Some of River’s memories made the Doctor’s hearts beat faster: the first time they slept together, the Doctor all elbows and nerves and awkward kisses (but River had loved every moment); the time the Doctor had thought he’d lost her and they’d made love on the floor of the console room, too relieved and frantic to bother finding a bed; the first time River brought out the handcuffs. She never went into too much detail – she’d always favoured innuendo – but the Doctor had been there too, and her memory filled in all the blanks.

Some of River’s memories, however, were more bittersweet.

_He told me his name today._

The Doctor swallowed, unable to read further for a moment. She remembered that day. Darillium, and near the end. She’d wanted to save it as long as possible, because telling River meant that their time was short. And River had known it too, somehow, or had sensed his mood; there had been tears in her eyes when she whispered it back to him. 

The Doctor hated endings. She didn’t, couldn’t, regret having known River, or the joy that River had brought her, and the intervening years had soothed the hurt of her absence with the passage of time. Yet still there was an ache, an empty gap, almost a homesickness. She would never stop half-expecting River to appear around a corner, just as she used to. 

There were still a few pages in River’s diary, and the entry for the day her older self had told River his name wasn’t finished. The Doctor sighed, and read on.

_My love, someday you will read this, when I am gone. I know you will. Don’t read any further just now – spoilers! (Work it out.)_

The Doctor stared at the words, her thoughts awhirl. 

What had happened that day? He had told her his name, and she had stroked his cheek, and they had stood on the balcony, watching the Singing Towers. She had told him a story about one of her first archaeology digs, back when she was still trying to track him down during her university days, making him laugh with her wicked imitations of a fussy bureaucrat who had tried to shut them down for irregularities in their planning permissions. (“To be fair, there _were_ irregularities. But where’s the fun in playing by the book?”) They’d run out of River’s favourite champagne and he’d gone for more; he could have taken the TARDIS but he’d enjoyed the walk by the light of the moon. When he returned, they’d drunk champagne together, and he had played his guitar, as she sang along; they’d gone to bed, and she had whispered his name in his ear as he moved inside her, and he had closed his eyes and pressed his face into her hair, unable to trust his own expression.

Spoilers. What were spoilers?

Her pulses were racing. That word – and here! River had one last puzzle for her, and her breath was coming faster. She’d worked it out already, somewhere in her subconscious, had known from the instant she’d seen the words – what was it? What were the spoilers?

He’d gone to get River’s champagne.

With a gasp, she was on her feet, the diary falling shut in her hand. She set it down carefully on the shelf, stroking its cover with one half-reverent finger, and then she was walking, jogging, running towards the control room. 

Her hearts sung as her hands flew over the console.

❧

River was standing on the balcony, just as the Doctor had left her, minutes and a lifetime ago. She didn’t turn at the Doctor’s step. “Back already? Did you forget money again?”

The Doctor didn’t trust her own voice. 

River turned, her eyes sweeping over the Doctor. “Oh, we have a visitor.” Her eyebrows soared, the corners of her mouth twisting upwards. “I do love visitors. If you’re planning on being a nuisance, however, I should warn you, I have a gun, and my husband’s not home to be annoyed by me using it.”

“He’d notice the mess,” the Doctor said, though she wasn’t entirely sure her last self would have. He’d missed things sometimes, especially when under extreme stress. Like when Clara had thought she was throwing all the TARDIS keys in a volcano, and they’d gone to Hell together, and he hadn’t noticed the Master was waltzing around in a new regeneration for an embarrassingly long time. And Missy-the-pretend-android hadn’t even been trying very hard to disguise herself.

River’s face was puzzled now. “Do I know you?”

“Yes,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, don’t tell me,” River said, coming forward. “I do love a mysterious stranger. Let’s see… were you one of my university friends? No, not unless you became a Time Agent, and I think Na’alah had more arms than you do. You’re not a Dalek, obviously, though I suppose you could be one of their puppets. Oooh, are you an Auton? Plastic is always fun. What century are we in again, let me think…”

“River,” the Doctor said.

River looked up into her face, meeting her eyes full-on for the first time. 

The Doctor smiled.

“Well, now here’s a surprise,” River said, her eyes dancing.

“I missed you,” the Doctor said, simply, and leaned in to kiss her.

And _oh_ , she had missed this. River’s kiss was just as sweet, just as intoxicating, just as fierce as she remembered. The Doctor’s hearts hammered in her chest, and when River’s arms came around her, she smiled into the kiss, full of joy.

“How long has it been?” River asked, leaning their foreheads together.

That was her River. Trust her to guess. River had mentioned the rumours about the two of them and Darillium on that first night when they’d listened to the Singing Towers, when the Doctor’s past self had promised her twenty-four years; another woman might have assumed the visit of a future self meant that the rumours had been false. But her River knew – had perhaps read it in her eyes, or in the desperateness of her kiss – that this self had lost her. 

“A long time,” the Doctor said. 

“And you’re still not over me? I’m flattered.”

“I’m not good at saying goodbye,” the Doctor said, rubbing her thumb against the side of River’s hand. She’d become better at it, after the time she’d been driven crazy by her confession dial and had been ready to risk the universe to prevent Clara from dying, and River had been one of her first successes. Perhaps she was backsliding, to re-open this goodbye, and yet her hearts were singing so loudly, she couldn’t find it in her to be sorry. 

River didn’t say anything to this, just put her hand on the Doctor’s cheek and kissed her, a kiss that would have turned her bowtie self eighteen shades of red. This Doctor tightened her hold around River’s waist and kissed back, just as deep and just as dirty, and lost track of time, the constellations spinning above in their eternal whirl.

“Come on,” River said, when they broke apart at last. (Respiratory bypass, always excellent.) “I’ll fly us somewhere special. I’ve been saving the Suzerainty of Skulls on Dgorthian Five for a rainy day.”

“The Suzerainty of Skulls?” the Doctor asked, arching an eyebrow, but with no heat behind it. River’s adventures were usually hair-raising, but never boring. 

“Back before younger you brings the champagne,” River promised with a smile.

Perhaps the Doctor should have demurred, should have kissed River goodbye. Even this little time with River was already pulling at healed wounds; she found she missed River more now, not less. If this regeneration fully remembered what it was like to travel the universe with River at her side, would the ache echo in her hearts until she changed her face again? This reunion was on the inexorable tick of borrowed time.

Yet as she looked into her wife’s eyes, the Doctor discarded the reasoned choice. “I parked on the balcony,” she said.

River’s smile was radiant and the slightest bit wicked, just like her.

The Doctor took her hand and followed her out into the stars.

❧

When they returned, River took them in on silent. “Just in case my old man’s back already,” she said, grinning at the Doctor like a cat with a canary. “Wouldn’t want him hearing the TARDIS and thinking I’d pinched it again. He gets sulky when I have fun without him.”

“Sulky,” the Doctor said, leaning against the rail and shamelessly watching River from the rear view. Her arse really was a work of art. “Is that any way to talk about your husband?”

“Well, he does,” River said, unrepentant, her hands flying with quick sureness over the console. The TARDIS hummed blissfully, happy to have her daughter back. “Now my wife seems a much sunnier type entirely.”

The Doctor didn’t feel sunny, not now that all the running on Dgorthian Five was over and her hearts had settled back into a normal rhythm, not now that their separation was within sight again. Oh, she could return a few more times during the Darillium years, taking advantage of every time her younger self left River alone, but those stolen moments would run short soon enough. She would be left alone again. 

Time to choose another companion, she supposed. Isn’t that what she always did when she lost someone? Rose had been followed by Martha, Amy and Rory by Clara, Clara by Bill… going all the way back to when Susan had been followed by Vicki. And River had never been a full-time companion, a constant at her side, reliable and sure. No, River had been as unpredictable as the Vortex, as independent as the TARDIS, and as bright as the stars themselves.

The Doctor pushed herself off the rail and stepped up behind River, sliding a hand into her curls and turning her head for a deep, fierce kiss. 

They’d already made love once, as soon as they’d taken the TARDIS into the Vortex from Darillium. River’s body had been as intoxicating and magical as the Doctor remembered, and River had been delighted to explore the Doctor’s new self. They’d fallen into bed together, hands everywhere, River sucking a mark on the Doctor’s breast and the Doctor sliding a hand under River’s waistband, and the Doctor had lost all track of relative time, as she and her wife found their way to joy together.

For most of her old selves, that would have been enough. As wonderful as sex with River had always been, a Gallifreyan’s sex drive wasn’t usually up for more than one go. But now the Doctor’s blood was running high again, and before she let River step out of those doors and go back to her old self, she needed this – needed River in her arms, needed River’s mouth on hers, needed the warm solid press of River between her and the TARDIS console, River’s firm hand on the back of her neck, River’s strong thigh pressed up between hers, River, River, River.

“Whatever happens to me after Darillium,” River said, the usual teasing lilt of her voice turned for once into gentleness, “I’m glad I got to know this you.”

The Doctor dropped her head to River’s shoulder and breathed in her scent. “Me too,” she said, her voice husky.

They stood like that for a long minute before the TARDIS, sounding a little apologetic, landed. “We’re here,” River said, the words half-muffled in the Doctor’s hair. 

The Doctor could do this. She could.

“Catch you later,” River said at the door, leaning in for one last kiss, her hand cupping the Doctor’s cheek, her smile bright. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“There are quite a few things you do that I would never do,” the Doctor protested, forcing a smile on to her own face.

And then River was slipping out through the door, and then she was gone.

The Doctor turned away from the doors and walked blindly back to the console, reaching out to touch it. She could feel the energy of the TARDIS surrounding her, stabilising her; but this wasn’t a hurt that the TARDIS could help, or a tight spot the TARDIS could avoid. The Doctor lost people, that was an inescapable part of her life, and it never got any easier. She might have learned how to let go, but it still hurt like the dickens, every time. 

“What exactly were you thinking?”

Caught up in her thoughts and still knocked askance by River’s departure, the Doctor hadn’t heard the door open. She whirled, an instinctive reaction before her brain caught up to her surprise. 

Her past self had shut the door behind him, and was leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest and an extremely sceptical look on his face. “Christ, young again? That’s a symptom of senility, if you ask me, this obsession we seem to have with youth and having a young face. What’s wrong with a few grey hairs? It makes me look distinguished.”

“Your eyebrows make you look terrifying,” the Doctor said. She was damned if she was going to have her own younger self come on board and start finding fault with her. “And that scowl. Maybe I was going for a more approachable look this time.”

He snorted. “Approachable? With that turned-up nose and icy expression?”

“You did just come on board my TARDIS and start insulting me,” the Doctor pointed out. “I think a little ice is understandable.”

He glowered for a moment more – and then made a face, the tension breaking. “Have you met Missy yet? She’s going to think she had something to do with this.”

Missy. The Doctor’s hearts ached. She’d really thought her friend might stand with her against the Cybermen, but Missy had left her to die without a backwards glance. The Master had done so many evil things in the past, of course, but never before had the Doctor had so much hope for a change. That was all to come for her past self – the hope, and the loss. 

“I haven’t,” was all she said. “Not yet.”

She wondered why he had come to talk to her. As a rule, she tried not to cross her own timestream. Oh, it had happened a number of times – it wasn’t catastrophic as long as you were careful – but it complicated their life. Memories that couldn’t be retained, leaving holes, people who remembered you without you remembering them, that missed honeymoon with Elizabeth I… better to keep her timeline linear, on the whole. 

“Why did you come back?” he asked. There was an intensity in his voice that the Doctor knew meant he was controlling himself with an effort. She remembered how emotional that self had been, bottled up behind that expressive face. “Did you find a way to save River?”

The Doctor’s hearts seized, and she turned away. “No,” she told the console curtly.

“There has to be a way to get her out of that computer,” her younger self said. “What have you tried?”

_I’ve been busy trying to change Missy, and failing. Got a Companion turned into a Cyberman. Almost refused to regenerate. You have so much pain ahead of you, Doctor._

Aloud, she said, “I thought you told River that every night is the last night for something. That times end.”

“You know as well as I do that what we tell them isn’t always the truth.”

“The Doctor lies.”

“Make me a liar,” he said, his voice rough. “If she’d died, we could let go. But she’s alive, she’s imprisoned in there, and she belongs in the stars.”

The Doctor turned around again to meet his eyes. “You want me to get River out of the Library, out of the Library infested with Vashta Nerada, I might remind you. And that’s if I could somehow find a way to make the computer give her back in the first place. She doesn’t have a body anymore, Doctor!”

“Find a way,” he said, stubbornly. “Do it. You came back, so you care for her. Regeneration didn’t change that.”

“Of course I care for her,” the Doctor said, pushed past her breaking point.

Her younger self opened the door. “Then fight for her,” he said over his shoulder, and let the door slam shut behind him.

The Doctor flung the TARDIS into motion, scarcely knowing the coordinates she set, only wanting to get away, before she raced out after him and took River in her arms once more, timestreams be damned.

❧

When they landed, the Doctor stepped out onto a familiar lawn. “The university?” she asked the TARDIS, shaking her head. This was one of the TARDIS’s attempts to be helpful, she was sure of it. But how would the university be helpful? With Missy having betrayed her, the decades she had spent hoping for change seemed pointless now, bitterness colouring the edges of her memories. Perhaps with more time she would be able to remember those days with less pain, but for now it was all too raw.

She walked down the path, ambling aimlessly. She liked a good walk to clear her head, and the brisk night air was calming. In a different universe, perhaps she and River could have been professors together at a university like this one; she would have liked to have sat in the back of River’s lectures, taking notes on the more outrageous points to argue with her about later. (This regeneration had no more respect for archaeology than the last one.)

Up ahead, there was a knot of undergraduates, laughing and jostling each other, their clothing colourful and their language even more so. The scent of kebabs was in the air, and someone was talking about football, in a loud voice emboldened by a few pints.

One of the figures jogged something in the Doctor’s memory, and as she drew closer to the group, she saw that it was Bill. A younger Bill, she thought – though the Doctor generally had no reliable grasp of relative ages – but Bill nonetheless. Bill before she travelled with the Doctor’s younger self, Bill before the Master turned her into a Cyberman, Bill before she went travelling the universe with Heather. Bill before it all began.

“Excuse me,” the Doctor said to Bill. “Can you tell me where the art gallery is?”

Bill looked at her, no recognition on her face. (But how could there be?) “That way,” she said, pointing through the trees. 

The Doctor thanked her with a smile. 

As she walked towards the art gallery, she thought. Why had the TARDIS brought her here? Was she supposed to cross her own timestream and go to the Vault to break Missy out, try to recruit her to use her computer skills to rescue River? She knew without even running any checks that doing that would be catastrophic to the space-time continuum, even if Missy could do it (and didn’t try to make the Vashta Nerada into an army to conquer the universe, which would be just like her). She’d spoken to Bill, but nothing had happened – and Bill had no particular computer skills, certainly not this young, before the Doctor had even met her.

This young.

The Doctor stopped in her tracks, a slow smile beginning to form on her face, as she realised what the TARDIS was trying to tell her. She turned it over in her head, looking at it from all angles – and then she began to run.

❧

“About time you got here,” River said, but the faux-scolding expression on her face was only playful, and the Doctor kissed it off. She was too full of relief and exhilaration to wait.

“Aw _yeah_ , lesbians take over the universe!” she heard, _sotto voce_ , from behind them.

“And who is this?” River asked, as they broke apart.

Bill grinned at her. “Bill Potts, sentient space oil. This is my girlfriend Heather. The professor here said you needed a lift out of a computer, and Heather’s good at that sort of stuff, so here we are.”

Heather shrugged, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “It’s easy. Bill was a Cyberman, you were in a computer – it’s all just atoms.”

“Thank you,” River told them, then smirked at Bill. “You’re looking good for a Cyberman.”

“No hitting on the students,” the Doctor protested.

River laughed, her eyes dancing.

“I think this calls for a celebration,” Bill said. “Double-date on Morthian Prime? The bartender there makes a mean Sunblast. We’ll go order, and you two can catch up in the TARDIS.”

“They were in a hurry,” River said, as Bill and Heather disappeared. “What did you tell them about me?”

“Nothing,” the Doctor said. “I think they guessed I wanted you to myself for a little while.”

“And why would you want that?” River asked, a hand ever-so-innocently beginning to sneak underneath the Doctor’s shirt. 

“I can think of a few reasons,” the Doctor said, and kissed her properly, as the TARDIS hummed around them, extremely satisfied with her role in proceedings.

Nothing lasted forever. Eventually the story of the Doctor and River Song would end, for all things came to an end in the fullness of time. 

But it would not end this day.

The Doctor kissed her wife, and her hearts sung with joy.

❧

_epilogue_

A month later, the Doctor remembered that she had never finished reading River’s diary.

It lay in the library where she’d left it, and the Doctor touched its cover, stroking the familiar blue. With River traveling with her for a time, it seemed like an invasion of privacy to finish reading it now. She took it to River instead, who leafed through it with a smirk on her face at some of the more salacious parts. 

“Here’s what I think,” River said, snapping the diary shut. 

“What do you think?” the Doctor asked, the corners of her mouth already sneaking upwards.

River grinned. “I think I need a new diary. And then you’re going to help me fill it.”

“I can do that,” the Doctor said. “All of Time and Space, where do you want to start?”

River patted the console. “Wherever she takes us.”

“You hear that, girl?” the Doctor said, coming to stand next to River, her arm sliding around her shoulders, holding her tight. “Take us away!”

The TARDIS hummed happily, and their next adventure began.

❧


End file.
